The rules, in full

Overview

Every player is dealt two private cards. Those cards immediately describe a trading position: which way you are betting BTC, how much of your notional $10,000 book you have committed, and at what leverage. Nobody can change their position after the deal — the only decision left is how much money to put in the pot, which is exactly the decision poker has always been about.

A shared BTC price is stamped at the start of the hand (the deal price) and again when the market window closes (the final price). Every book is marked against the same two numbers. The best-performing book still standing at showdown wins the pot.

The deck

A standard 52-card deck. Two rules read every card in it: colour is direction, rank is power. Suit carries no other meaning — ♠ and ♣ are interchangeable, and so are ♥ and ♦.

Number cards: size, no leverage

A numeric card deploys rank × 5% of the book at 1× — plain spot exposure.

Courts and aces: full half-book, pre-levered

Every court card and ace deploys the same 50% of the book — its maximum allowance. What separates them is leverage.

There are no flat cards. A flat book is something you build, not something you are dealt — it happens when your two cards point in opposite directions with equal force.

Building a book

Your two cards are added together with their signs. Black exposure is positive, red exposure is negative, and the sum is your net exposure — the only number that decides how the market moves your book.

Gross vs net

Gross exposure is what you deployed; net is what you are actually exposed to. K♣ Q♦ is $75,000 gross but only $5,000 net. The pot does not care about gross — but your opponents cannot see either number, which is where the poker lives.

Anatomy of a hand

1. Blinds and deal. The dealer button moves one seat, the two seats after it post the small and big blind, and everyone receives two private cards.
2. Opening round — before any price exists. A full betting round runs on the cards alone. You know your book; nobody knows what the market will do with it.
3. The deal price. On the next round minute, BTC is stamped as the deal price. Every book at the table is marked from that one number.
4. Three more betting rounds — BET 1, BET 2 and BET 3, four in all counting the opener. Each allows at most two raises, and ends when every player has acted — nothing is cut short and nothing auto-passes. A round also has a floor: even if everyone acts instantly it runs a full minute on Turbo, three on Standard, so the market has time to move between rounds.
5. The final price. The market window closes on the clock and BTC is stamped a second time — whether or not the betting has finished. Locking before BET 3 is done is normal, not an edge case: the remaining rounds simply play out against a result that is already known.
6. Showdown. Surviving books are revealed, valued against the two prices, and the best one takes the pot.

If everyone folds to one player at any point, the hand ends immediately and no price is needed — that player takes the pot without showing.

The two clocks

This is the part that behaves unlike poker, and it is worth understanding precisely. The market runs on a wall clock that nobody at the table controls. The betting runs at whatever pace the players set. They are deliberately independent.

The market always opens on a round minute, with enough lead time for the opening betting round to happen first. From the open, the window runs its fixed duration and closes — whatever the betting is doing.

When the clocks disagree

Betting rules

Standard no-limit Texas Hold'em betting, in dollars.

• Blinds. The seat left of the button posts the small blind, the next posts the big blind. Heads-up, the button posts the small blind. The button and both blinds are marked on the table.
• Actions. Fold, check, call, or raise. First action of the hand sits left of the big blind.
• Minimum raise. At least the size of the previous raise, and never less than the big blind.
• Raise cap. Two raises per betting round, to keep rounds from stalling a live market.
• All-in. You may always move in for your remaining stack. Short all-ins create side pots, resolved in the usual way — you can only win the portion you contributed to.
• Timeout. Let your clock expire and you check if it is free, fold if it is not.
• Leaving mid-hand. Your hand is folded, your remaining stack is returned, and you are paid out once the hand settles.

Rake

5% of the pot, capped by table size: 1 big blind heads-up, 2 at three or four players, 3 at five or six. No rake is taken if the hand ends during the opening round, before the market has produced anything.

Settlement

Each surviving book is valued with the same formula:

value = $10,000 + Σ (signed exposure × (final price − deal price) / deal price)

Signed exposure is per card — positive for black, negative for red. Arithmetic runs in integer cents with banker's rounding, so every player's book is valued on exactly the same terms and the ledger always closes to the cent.

Worked example

You hold K♣ 5♥ — net long $37,500. The deal price is $62,415 and the final price is $62,802, a rise of 0.62%. Your book is worth $10,000 + $37,500 × 0.0062 = $10,232.50. A rival holding Q♦ 3♠ is net short $33,500 and finishes at $9,792.15. Your book wins the pot.

Ties and voids

• Ties split the pot evenly; odd cents go to the first seat left of the button.
• Void hands. If the price feed goes unhealthy and no final price can be trusted, the hand is voided and every player's contribution is returned. No rake is taken on a void.

Tables & stakes

Every table is six-handed. Four stake levels, each in Turbo and Standard, in paper and real money.

Buy-ins follow the standard 40–100 big blind convention. Paper tables use play chips and cost nothing; real tables use your deposited balance.

House bots

Paper tables keep three house bots so a game is always available the moment you sit down. They are not there to fill a busy table: every human who takes a seat retires one bot, so a table converts seat by seat into an all-human game, and refills with bots again when the humans leave.

• A bot never keeps a human waiting — if the table is full, a bot gives up its seat.
• Bots retire at the end of the hand they are in; nobody is pulled out of a live pot.
• Real-money tables have no bots at all. Every opponent there is a person.

Bots play a genuine strategy rather than a script. They estimate how far their book already sits from $10,000, how much volatility is left in the window to move it, and how likely that leaves them to finish ahead of the field — then bet that estimate against the pot odds, with individual aggression and bluffing tendencies on top.

Money & wallets

• A connected wallet is required to take a seat, on paper tables as well as real ones — it is the identity a payout is made to.
• Wallet connection uses the Wallet Standard registry, so any compliant Solana wallet works. You link by signing a one-time challenge message; no funds move and no approval is granted.
• You can view your linked address, copy it, or disconnect it at any time from the profile menu.
• Paper and real balances are completely separate and never mix. Paper chips have no cash value.
• Buy-ins move from your balance into table escrow and back out when you leave, through a double-entry ledger — every cent is accounted for on both sides.

Points & tiers

Points are earned on real-money play only, and the base is the rake you actually paid rather than raw volume — so points track real activity and cannot be farmed by passing chips between your own accounts.

points = (your share of the hand's rake in cents × 10)
         × tier multiplier
         × daily-streak multiplier
         × 1.25 if the hand reached showdown

The streak multiplier starts at 1.00× and adds 0.05× for each consecutive day played, capping at 1.30× after seven days. The showdown bonus exists so that grinding folds is never the most efficient way to earn.

Referrals

Both sides benefit, and the referrer's share never comes out of the referee's pocket.

• Lifetime share. The referrer earns an extra 10% of every point their referee earns, credited separately and forever.
• Joining bonus. Once a referee reaches 1,000 points, both people are credited a 2,500-point bonus.
• Every account has its own referral code, and a code can be entered once, before you have a referrer.

Leaderboards

Three boards, updated as hands settle:

• Real money — net profit and loss across real tables.
• Paper — the same for play chips, so the practice game keeps a score too.
• Points — lifetime points, which is also what sets your tier.

Profit is measured net of buy-ins, so you cannot climb by depositing.

Audit record

Every hand is archived in full when it settles. The record includes:

• The deal price and final price, plus the exact wall-clock start and end of the market window.
• Every player's two cards — including players who folded and never showed.
• Each player's total contribution, final book value, and payout.
• The complete action log: every blind, check, call, raise, fold and timeout, in order, with timestamps.
• The pot, the rake taken, and how the hand ended.

Your own hand history is in your account; the full archive of any hand is available to the operator for dispute resolution. Cards are dealt with a cryptographically secure shuffle and are sealed at the deal — nothing about a hand can change after the cards are out.

Glossary

Book

Your $10,000 notional trading account for one hand, described entirely by your two cards.

Deal price

The shared BTC price stamped when the market window opens. Every book starts from it.

Final price

The shared BTC price stamped when the window closes. Every book is valued against it.

Exposure

Deployed size × leverage, in dollars. Positive is long, negative is short.

Net exposure

Your two cards' exposure added together with signs. What the market actually moves.

Flat book

Net exposure of zero. Worth exactly $10,000 no matter what BTC does.

Half-book rule

No card may deploy more than 50% of your book, which caps any hand at $100,000 of exposure.

Market window

The fixed span between deal price and final price: 3 minutes on Turbo, 10 on Standard.

Portfolio value

What your book is worth at the final price. The number that wins or loses the pot.